Roma's Champions League Charge Rattles Juventus and Milan
Roma head to Parma on Sunday with something they have not felt in years: the Champions League within arm’s reach and two giants of Italian football suddenly glancing nervously over their shoulders.
A month ago, it looked finished. Inter Milan had ripped them apart, the new champions delivering the kind of hammering that usually kills off European dreams and triggers another bout of Roman soul‑searching.
Instead, it lit a fire.
Ten points from four matches have dragged Roma to within a single point of fourth‑placed Juventus. AC Milan, once flirting with a title push, sit just two points further ahead in third. With three games left, the capital club have crashed the top‑four conversation and changed the mood of the run‑in.
“We're going well, but we know that we cannot make any mistakes if we're going to have any chance of making the Champions League,” Gian Piero Gasperini warned after last weekend’s thumping of Fiorentina. “We've got three matches that we have to get right and hope that others don't.”
No one at Trigoria needs reminding how thin the margin is. Roma have been away from the Champions League since Porto dumped them out in the last 16 seven years ago. Seven long seasons of Thursday nights, near‑misses and internal resets. Now, at last, there is a clear route back.
Gasperini wins the power struggle
That route almost didn’t belong to Gasperini.
Just weeks ago, his job looked fragile. A simmering power struggle with Claudio Ranieri, the local hero installed as senior advisor to the Friedkin family, spilled into the open. The tension erupted publicly on the eve of the 3-0 win over Pisa, the match that unexpectedly became the launchpad for this surge.
Ranieri is gone now, dismissed from his advisory role a fortnight ago. The Friedkins chose their man on the bench over the beloved Roman in the boardroom. It was a bold call in a city that venerates its own.
So far, it looks like the right one.
Gasperini has tightened Roma’s structure, sharpened their pressing and, crucially, convinced the stands. Even after his row with Ranieri, a lifelong Roma fan and symbol of the club, the coach has held the backing of supporters who can see a clear identity taking shape and a team that finally looks like it belongs in the top four.
Milan’s collapse opens the door
Roma’s rise has been perfectly timed. Milan’s collapse has been just as dramatic.
Massimiliano Allegri’s side have taken only seven points since beating Inter two months ago in a derby that briefly threatened to reopen the title race. The promise of that night has dissolved into a grim sequence: one goal in five matches, momentum gone, confidence draining.
Now Milan are no longer hunting; they are hunted. Roma are closing fast. Como, improbably, are only three points off the top four themselves. A race that once looked settled has burst back into life.
The blows keep coming for Milan. On Sunday they host Atalanta at San Siro without their midfield metronome. Luka Modric, the lynchpin of Allegri’s system, has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a cheekbone fracture, his absence glaringly obvious in last weekend’s flat display at Sassuolo. The timing could hardly be worse.
Roma, by contrast, look to the calendar and see opportunity. Parma have nothing at stake. Verona, their final opponents, are already relegated. The danger lies in the game in between: the Rome derby, the fixture that ignores form, logic and league tables.
Lazio will relish the chance to wreck a neighbour’s dream. They always do.
Malen, the cutting edge
If Gasperini has reshaped Roma’s structure, Donyell Malen has transformed their threat.
Twelve goals since arriving on loan from Aston Villa in January tell part of the story. The rest is in the way Roma now break lines, the way they suddenly carry menace every time they turn the ball over and surge into space.
Malen has become the reference point of this second‑half revival, the forward who gives Roma the same vertical punch Gasperini once coaxed from Ademola Lookman or Alejandro Gomez during his nine hugely successful years at Atalanta. When Roma spring forward now, they do it with conviction. They know there is an end product waiting.
Three games, one point to make up, two giants wobbling. Roma have talked for years about returning to the top table of European football. Over the next fortnight, they will discover whether this is another false dawn – or the season when the club finally walks back through the Champions League door.
